In Ruin
by urbandaily
Summary: Reid couldn't remember how it happened, but his best friend was now lying on his bathroom floor with her head bashed in. And everything was slipping so far out of his control... AU, dark. Major character death.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Characters don't belong to me.

Warnings for major character death, violence, gruesome images.

* * *

"_I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."_

_- Edgar Allan Poe_

* * *

He couldn't do this anymore. He'd reached his wits' end; his nerves were shot to hell and his sanity lay in pieces around him – he was _done_; he'd burnt out. It was time he checked out.

Yet he just couldn't bring himself to leave the only life he'd ever known – not the friends nor the career he loved. He'd been groomed for this; he didn't know how to do or _be_ anything else.

He'd like to pretend it wasn't happening to him, this _insanity_ thing; that it wasn't going to ruin him. He'd feared this outcome, for as long as he could remember. And now it would take everything from him – his career, his colleagues . . . he had been the one to push them away, angry and embarrassed over his own inability to cope, and now he had no one.

No job. No family. This _thing _was fast becoming a reality that Reid could not ignore, and therefore a reality with which he could not cope.

It wouldn't be long before it consumed him completely.

* * *

_Psychosis, _the Bureau psychologist had decided, and it seemed that the diagnosis alone could justify Reid's dismissal from the job. That pissed him off, because "psychosis" was just so full of shit, was just so painfully generic, was just the good doctor's way of getting Reid out of her face – it didn't even begin to cover all of the things that were actually going wrong with his brain.

It had taken him quite a long time to work up the nerve to make this appointment, and this was what he got for his efforts.

_I can prescribe medication, _the woman suggested in a way that told Reid that it really wasn't a suggestion at all. But he didn't want that. He didn't want that at all.

_Perhaps you should consider a temporary leave of absence; seek treatment at a health facility – _

She'd made it sound like a fucking holiday, and Reid hated it. He didn't want what she was offering; it'd be the beginning of the end, he just knew it.

_I cannot recommend your return to the Bureau if you will not seek treatment for your . . . condition._

Good. Fine. He could recognize a threat when he heard one. Reid didn't respond to threats. And he absolutely refused to relinquish his life to white walls and white uniforms and insane roommates. Not yet, anyway.

_Then Dr. Reid, I'm afraid I have no choice but to demand your suspension. You cannot be a liability for this agency, you understand. I will notify your unit chief immediately._

* * *

Hotch hadn't been able to do anything for him. Not this time.

For the two straight weeks following his new orders (_seek treatment or resign_, they'd said – another threat), he sat on his couch unmoving, cradling his skull in his hands and staring dejectedly at the carpet.

On the first day of the third week, his phone rang. He checked it before not answering. Emily. Not that he _didn't_ want to talk to her, but . . . he didn't want to talk to her. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He needed the space, right now. This was something he had to deal with on his own.

But she called, and called, and called again; no one could ever say that Emily Prentiss was one to give up easily.

Reid's exasperation got the better of him, and his hand shot out and pulled the handset off its cradle. "_What_?"

"Reid, God, I've been trying to reach you for the past two days," Emily admonished, paying no heed to his less-than-sunny temperament. _Two days? _He couldn't recall.

He sighed. "What do you want, Emily?" He felt deflated, exhausted, and it was every bit evident in his voice.

Pause. (Of course she noticed it, too.) "Spence, are you okay?" She cut right to the chase, neither patronizing nor mocking, but genuinely concerned for his well-being.

_A friend, _he reminded himself, _Emily is a friend._

"I . . ." he broke off, unsure of what to say to her.

"I'm coming over." _Click._

Reid slowly pulled the phone away from his ear.

The thing about good friends, he supposed, was that they almost always knew when you needed them, even if you didn't want them.

The dial tone thrummed faintly in the air.

Reid yawned until his jaw cracked. For the life of him, he could not remember the last time he'd _really_ slept. He couldn't keep going like this. Maybe he could just close his eyes for a little while. Just until Emily got here.

_Just until Emily gets here._

* * *

Upon waking, the first thing he noticed was the smell – the foul, metallic tang of a crime scene, right under his nose.

And when he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the blood. It covered him from his neck down to his knees, dry and stiff on his clothes and his hands and _how did it get there_?

. . . The last thing he remembered was waiting for Emily to show up, and falling asleep in the interim.

_Em, where are you? You were supposed to be here._

Stumbling to the bathroom, he flicked on the lights and threw the scene at his feet into sharp relief.

Emily.

His stomach plummeted.

_. . . Emily_.

He fell to his knees.

_No, no, no, no, no . . . _

Her body was half-slumped against the bathtub; ashen, battered. She stared sightlessly through vacant eyes. She was caked in her own blood.

"No . . ." He couldn't breathe.

Without thinking, he extended a shaking hand to touch her face, and the blood on his fingers – her blood – crumbled over her skin. She was cold.

A sob forced its way out of Reid's mouth. He began to tremble, imperceptible at first, but then harder, and harder, because this, this _wasn't_ the way it was supposed to happen and this _wasn't_ the way things were supposed to go.

_What have I done? _

The left side of her skull had caved in. She sported a broken eye socket and a fractured jaw. Blood, a hell of a lot of it, congealed around her ear; around her eyes; around her smashed nose and split mouth; around the nasty gash on her cheek; around her throat . . . He tilted her chin upward, and the new angle exposed four deep ruts in the side of her neck and one under her jaw. _What the hell?_

There were huge blanks in his memory; everything was frustratingly obscure. Disjointed fragments flickered in front of him like a stop motion picture, the things he did remember:

_He curled his fingers into the flesh of her throat, gouging with single-minded purpose until he broke skin and sunk into warm, wet tissue. Arterial blood spurted around his fingers, spraying his arms, his face, his shirt . . ._

He didn't understand how he could have done this; _any_ of this. How in the hell had his mental state regressed so drastically? How could he have _murdered_ one of his family? _How could he not remember doing it? _

_Oh _God_ I'm sorry I'm _sorry_ . . ._

* * *

TBC.

Feedback?


	2. Chapter 2

_Part two, in which Reid's psychosis becomes increasingly evident . . ._

* * *

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, frozen in place, just staring. He became aware of a faint but incessant beeping, present slightly beyond the extent of his current mental capacity, but there nonetheless. Eventually, it drew his gaze.

The telephone. That's what it was; lying by his feet, ceaselessly bleating its existence, although now, it was cracked and stained crimson. It hadn't looked like that the last time he'd used it. The last time . . .

And suddenly his mind made the connections that it couldn't before; filled in all the gaps he couldn't previously recall, and new memory struck him with all the force of a proverbial train. His transgression, illuminated.

_Reid, curling his left hand into – literally _into_ – the flesh of Emily's throat. Reid, wrapping his right hand around the cordless handset; using it like a rock as he smashed it again and again into the side of her face with unfounded fury. His fingers, buried in the tendons of her neck, hold her still and hold her down, and she couldn't fight back – at first because he'd knocked her unconscious and then because he'd knocked her dead. And now the phone was just as broken as her face . . ._

He reached out to stroke Emily's hair.

The reality of it was more than ruthless, and there were _consequences_ for things like this. They'd come after him. The BAU were determined on the best of days, and downright relentless on the worst, and when it was one of their own (_Lord have mercy on my soul_), it was another matter entirely.

_And what if the guilty party was also one of their own?_ He didn't even want to think about that. This was so fucked up, all of it.

And they _would_ figure it out. Prentiss wouldn't show up for work, and then they'd call, and she wouldn't answer, and then they'd have Garcia track her down and dig through her calls and discover that _he_ was the last person Emily had talked to. That _he_ was the last person she had gone to see. They'd come knocking down his door, and it would all be over.

_My God! You weren't even _smart_ about this!_

The phone shrieked at him suddenly, a twangy, warbled, defective ring that nearly had him jumping out of his own skin. Well. Obviously it wasn't totally broken.

Reid seized up. _It's them, _he thought, panic welling in his throat. _It's them already. _

But he couldn't _not_ take the call. If he remained unreachable, they would actively try to seek him out (a hell of a lot sooner than he was ready for) and he just couldn't have that. He couldn't face them . . . not yet, anyway. _Not with Rachel's body at my feet._

It kept ringing.

He just had to answer it. It was a simple thing. But –

_The last time I answered the phone, Emily ended up dead._

His logic was illogical, of course. He picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

It wasn't the team. "Hello, Dr. Reid, this is your super," said the voice on the other end, chilly and mechanical. It wasn't his super.

"Who is this?"

". . . This is your s–"

"No. Who is it _really_?"

". . . It doesn't matter."

"Who?"

Pause. The line crackled with heavy static. "We know what you did, Dr. Reid," it whispered finally. "We know what you did, and we're coming for you. Spencer Reid, we're coming for you."

Reid hung up and almost immediately, it rang again. He had a ridiculous urge to clap his hands over his ears.

"WE KNOW – YOU . . . WE'RE COMING –" sound exploded through the handset unbidden; tinny, warbled and unnaturally loud. He cried out in shock and knocked the phone away, but the volume only grew to freakishly forceful levels.

"WE – KNOW – WHAT YOU. . . ARE . . . WE ARE –" The voice distorted and deepened, warping like a melting toy.

Now he really _did_ clap his hands over his ears. His eyes screwed shut and he choked on a scream. _Crazy! Crazy, I'm just going crazy . . . _

"SPENCER REID, YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM US –" The voices morphed rapidly; first becoming Morgan's, then JJ's, then Rossi's, Hotch's, Garcia's and Emily's, before turning into a chorus with the entire team screaming and jeering.

The taste of pennies coated his tongue – he'd bitten through his lip.

"YOU'RE GOING TO PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!" They screamed.

Someone pounded on the door. Silence. The room fell still; no more shouting, no more screaming.

And then it was Derek Morgan who was shouting at him.

_Do you even remember Derek? You haven't spoken to him in over two weeks._

"Reid!" He called through the door, "Let me in, man! The team, we need you!"

Reid didn't want to respond, wanted to pretend he wasn't –

"I know you're in there!"

Never mind.

"C'mon, Reid! Emily's missing and we need to find her . . . we can't . . . we can't find her anywhere . . ." There was a desperation in his voice that Reid had never heard out of him before, and he wanted to answer, but Morgan's inevitable fury was not something he wanted to experience first-hand.

_If I could just have more time . . ._

He studied killers for a living; he knew all the telltale signs and slip-ups that he absolutely could not make – if he could just have a little more _time,_ he could make this all go away; no one would ever, _ever_ find her body, and he'd never be culpable.

A new voice introduced itself to his mind, hissing truths he'd really prefer to ignore.

_You're a fucking coward, Spencer._

This voice didn't belong to him.

(This voice didn't belong to him and _God_ he was hearing voices everywhere, now; just the cherry on top of a stellar month . . .)

Regardless, it was absolutely right. He _was_ a coward and he was downright despicable; he wanted to throw up for even considering these things he was considering. Emily deserved far better than this.

Morgan again: "Reid, let me in!"

"I – I can't." He responded hoarsely. What it came down to, he realized, was which one of them – Emily or himself – meant more to Morgan as a friend, because the man would have a decision to make. He could help Reid navigate his psychotic break _or_ he could avenge Emily's death, but the two choices were mutually exclusive. And Emily certainly deserved the justice more than he deserved the help.

"What? Reid, just come out here, man!"

He deflected instead. "What . . . what day is it?" He needed to figure out how much time had elapsed since the day he'd talked to Prentiss on the phone.

"Tuesday."

Two days. _Two days._ How could memory have fled him for two whole days? He'd wasted valuable time.

"Reid, what's wrong?"

_What's wrong is that my brain is Swiss cheese and I've killed our best friend and she's been rotting on my bathroom floor for two days and I've got to dispose of her body and I've got to disappear and this was _never_ supposed to happen . . ._ He wanted to say. He _wanted_ to get caught. Needed it, even. He _needed_ to pay for what happened, simple as that, or else he'd become consumed by his own personal guilt.

_But you're too much of a coward to turn yourself in. Aren't you?_

He didn't have the nerve to face their would-be anger, their devastation; not this soon.

_Then run away. Is that what you're good at?_

"Reid, we don't have time for this! If you don't open the goddamn door, I'll bust it down!"

Reid was already halfway out the window, though; he'd made his decision, and he wasn't going to wait around for them to catch up. Out in the open air, his feet scrabbled for purchase on the brownstone and his hand reached up to slide the window shut from the outside. Then he let his hands go. It was only a two-story drop, but it still hurt when he crumpled in the bushes.

_Thorns. Goddamn._

Up above, he heard a muted _bam_ as Morgan kicked down his front door and a curse as he took in the sight of the room, painted in bloody trails. A cry when he discovered Emily's lifeless body in the bathroom. He knew now.

Reid needed to move. He estimated that he could have about an hour or so before the manhunt began in earnest – maybe even less than that. About as long as it'd take for Morgan to relay to the rest of the team the news that would kick them into overdrive –

_Reid's killed her. He's run away. _

They were probably the only people in the world who knew him well enough to be able to capture him; he'd have to disappear for awhile. No activity, no trails. Nothing for Garcia to sniff out; nothing for them to bear down upon. He'd have to be resourceful; he had nothing with him – literally nothing – but he was smart, and it was a big country. Anyway, he didn't plan on living like this forever.

They would catch up to him eventually. He had faith in that.

* * *

TBC.

_R&R, please!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Thanks to everyone who's reviewed!_

* * *

Two months, and he was surprised he'd even lasted this long. Both the murder and the investigation – still ongoing – were heavily publicized in the beginning, but not so much anymore. But every now and then, he'd still see his old face pop up on the news: _Murderer at large. Wanted by the FBI. Armed and dangerous. Mentally unstable._ Etcetera, etcetera.

He wondered what his mother would think of him.

All of this media coverage wasn't going to make him any easier to catch, though; not when he no longer wore the face that was being splashed across headlines nationwide.

His new face was a gruesome combination of chemical burns, shredded flesh and dental floss suturing – not exactly the work of a plastic surgeon. People gawked, but at least it wasn't because he was a recognizable murderer.

This self-mutilation was his own brand of penance, and penance, at the moment, happened to be self-service.

That was also a part of his penance. He was completely and utterly alone.

* * *

Three months in, and he'd begun to lose faith in his old team. With each passing day, it seemed more and more likely that they would not find him after all.

Maybe they'd forgotten him.

The thought made his stomach twist in cold despair. If they'd forgotten him, they'd also forgotten Emily and the fact that she was murdered and the fact that she remained unavenged. And how could they, her team, her _family_ (and his too, once upon a time), live with themselves, knowing that they were not working their absolute hardest to bring her murderer to justice?

_How can you live with yourself having murdered her in the first place?_

Maybe he could just turn himself in. He could do that now, and they wouldn't think twice about putting him away; not after this long.

_But you won't do it, will you? Still a coward, aren't you? What would Emily think of you? She used to respect you, you know. _

Every single one of his thoughts seemed to be plagued by Emily these days. He remembered a lot of things that were probably best forgotten, and agonized over all the things that he sorely missed. He never ceased to ache.

_Emily would hate you._

"Emily's dead." He found himself mumbling aloud. Whether voices or his own conscience, he was talking back now and that was never a good sign. "She's dead; she doesn't think anything."

* * *

"_I think I'm in love with you_." _He'd said to her once. They'd been completing an interrogation that looked as if it would be continuing on into the morning; their guy wasn't talking yet and they had to keep going until they broke him in two. They'd been taking it in turns and it was wearing them down almost as much as their suspect._

_He had watched as she reduced their rapist-turned-murderer to horrified tears and then walk out on him without so much as flinching. There was steel in her eyes and a set to her jaw and he was in awe, and more than a little in love. How spectacularly morbid. _

_She didn't look angry, or elated, or anything at all; he wondered if she'd even heard him. But then she fixed him with a curious look. "Your timing is terrible, Spencer," she replied, bemused. And it was, he conceded, yet he couldn't help but feel dismayed by her response anyway._

_As he prepared to enter the interrogation suite, she called after him, "I won't hold it against you." And he could almost laugh at that. It was just such an _Emily_ thing to say. And she may not have loved him the way he loved her, but somehow, he was okay with that._

* * *

He hadn't gone international, had feared his team would never find him if he did. He'd waited it out in some dusty little town instead – and waited, and waited.

In the end, it takes about six months for them to find him – half a year. A lot could happen in half a year. Nothing at all happened to _him_ in half a year. And by the time they finally got to him, he could feel nothing but relief. Because _this was it_; the chase was over. _They'd_ won. Congratulations all around.

And at the end of all things, this was his victory, too. _He_ had wanted it this way, after all.

* * *

_TBC._


	4. Chapter 4

_Part Four. _

_Thanks to all you reviewers; I hope you continue to enjoy!_

* * *

There was no recognition for him in their eyes, the day they came. They pressed him down into the asphalt with flat, dead expressions on their faces, and he couldn't help but think that he put that there. The death of their sister-in-arms had effectively broken each and every one of them. They were haunted; liminal.

Wordlessly, they cuffed his hands behind his back and made the silent trip back to the town's police station. From there it was back to Quantico by air, with him ferreted away in the plane's holding compartment.

When they landed, they put him up in an interrogation room, and suddenly it felt very hard to breathe.

"You should feel right at home," Derek sneered as he handcuffed Reid to the chair, and maybe he was right. Reid had been in here so many times before; he did know this room well.

But it was different this time, on this side of the table. There was no security, no safety, and the difference in sentiment was so very palpable. This was not his home. Not anymore.

They let him alone for a very long stretch of time. It was designed to make him nervous – it _should_ have made him nervous – but maybe they forgot that he used to use this technique, too. And anyway, he had no sense for time anymore, besides what he was told. Even his lucid moments (more frequent than he ever thought he could hope for) felt anachronous.

Rossi entered first. He held a file in his hands, which he tossed to the tabletop as he pulled out his chair, allowing the metal legs to scrape unpleasantly against the ground. He glanced at Reid only once. There was a long stretch of silence, and then –

"You fucked up your pretty boy face."

Reid looked up, but he still refused to meet his eyes. Reid shrugged. "Makes me hard to identify."

He snorted. "That's for damn sure."

They fell into an uncomfortable silence, and Reid fidgeted despite himself. The ceiling lights buzzed, and the sound grated on his brain. The air felt like syrup in his lungs, visual flies seemed to flit in and out of his periphery, and the lack of voices in his ears left him feeling decidedly hollow. (It should probably concern him how much he'd come to crave their presence, but he couldn't think about that right now.)

Since Emily, everything felt as though it'd been pulled out of perspective.

He gave in first. "What took you so long?" The desperation in his voice, the desperation he'd been feeling for six months, was impossible to mask. "You – you had me thinking I didn't even _matter_, anymore, that Emily didn't matter, that you'd just . . . just given it up. Why . . ." he took a deep breath, "_Why did you take so long?_"

Rossi blinked.

". . . You're serious." He said. And when Reid didn't respond, he repeated, "You're _serious!_" As if he couldn't believe his insolence. He scoffed and shook his head, leaning back in his chair. "You're a piece of work, Spencer."

Rossi threw the file at him, and the case photographs fell into Reid's lap. He flinched reflexively and attempted to push them away. "I don't need to see these." He informed his once-friend coldly.

"Yes you do." Rossi responded in clipped tones. "This is what _you've_ done. _Look at it_."

The door opened behind him then, and as Reid gathered up the photos with shaking hands, the rest of the team filed into the room. Derek. JJ. Hotch. Garcia - she was crying. Reid looked up pleadingly, but there was no sympathy for him in their eyes. They were here to watch as he fell apart in front of them.

So with shaking hands, he flipped the pictures one by one:

A shot of his apartment, blood smeared across the carpet, the couch, the walls . . .

A shot of his bathroom, Rachel's body sprawled across the peeling laminate . . .

A close-up of her ruined face, partially bashed into her brain . . .

His goddamned telephone, half in pieces and sticky with blood.

_Enough_.

With sudden violence, Reid swept them off the table and slammed his hands down. "I _don't_ need to see these!" He snarled again.

They fluttered to the ground softly, and no one spoke. Reid sucked in a deep breath, trying to gain control of his temper. His hands ran through his hair in poorly concealed distress. "I don't . . . you don't know how sorry I am." He whispered brokenly.

Derek scoffed and leaned over the table until he was only inches from Reid, and gripped the edge with white knuckles. It was a spectacular display of self-restraint that he hadn't yet throttled Reid with his bare hands. "_Sorry_? We know how sorry you're _not_." He looked away for a second, anchoring his loathing.

"I don't think," he began slowly, and Reid could see that he was building up steam, "that you understand how _bad_ this is. How _awful_ it is, what you've done. Because if you did, you _wouldn't_ have run away and you _wouldn't_ have put us through goddamn hoops running after you. You wouldn't have let Emily lie there _rotting_ on your bathroom floor! And if you hadn't had so much _pride_," Derek spat the word out like it disgusted him, "if you could have set your pride aside for just one damn minute, maybe you would have gotten the help you needed, the way you were _supposed_ to. And none of this, _none_ of this would have happened. And Emily would still be here." Derek hissed, teeth bared. Reid saw it now; Morgan had loved her, too.

Reid refused to meet his gaze. "It wasn't that simple." He said.

"_You used us to clean up your mess because you didn't have the _fucking_ guts to face what you did!"_

"You have to understand," Reid plowed on, slightly panicky. He was well aware of the fact that there was no excuse that validated his crimes. "That I . . . _never_ . . . meant for these things to happen . . . I didn't think . . . I never even thought that it would have been a possibility. And I . . ." he looked Morgan in the eye. "I _loved_ Emily. I was _in love_ with her."

"Fuck you!"

All of the _how dare you_'s seemed to resound in the room at Reid's declaration, although no one else had spoken. Reid could feel it in their collective glares, boring holes in him. Because he didn't deserve to love Emily – he didn't deserve to love. And he most certainly didn't deserve their sympathy for the offense.

Reid gave them a pained look (although, he conceded, his entire face probably looked perpetually pained whether he intended it to or not) and turned his hands up in supplicant. "What is it that you people want from me?" He asked, as if they all hadn't once been his family. "You have everything you need to prosecute, so do. Please.

"Please."

* * *

_TBC. _

_Reviews are warmly welcomed and always appreciated! :)_


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